


garage smell like dirt

by FullTimeAvocadoBoy



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: M/M, includes minor descriptions of injuries, post-TDKR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27794749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullTimeAvocadoBoy/pseuds/FullTimeAvocadoBoy
Summary: When you have a second-hand alter-ego, some identity crises are bound to crop up. When they do, it helps to have a Launchpad.
Relationships: Drake Mallard/Launchpad McQuack
Comments: 6
Kudos: 96





	garage smell like dirt

**Author's Note:**

> The original date of this draft was 11/11/2019, with editing done 11/29/2020, so it might be slightly inconsistent with itself and also with canon. For instance, it was written before we knew for sure that Launchpad's garage wasn't located at the manor itself...
> 
> Tumblr link: https://quiverwingduck.tumblr.com/post/636195321416990720/when-you-have-a-second-hand-alter-ego-some  
> Twitter link: https://twitter.com/ButterThatBurns/status/1305873911096045569

Darkwing Duck woke sometime around sun-up, judging by the severity of the beams of sunlight that squeezed through the cracks around the garage bay door to glare into his eyes. They highlighted the dust in the air that he’d been breathing in while he slept, and they did very, very little to warm the solid concrete he had passed out on. 

He was laying face down on Launchpad’s floor, several feet between him and the couch he’d been borrowing ever since his last gig went up in flames. Launchpad slept on a platform above his little area, and that was about all the privacy he got these days. Except Launchpad wasn’t here now. If he was, Darkwing would hear the snores. If he was, he wouldn’t have left Darkwing on the floor all night. 

Darkwing moved his arms to prop himself up, and there was an audible _pop_ , a cacophony of grinding and scraping from somewhere within, and a debilitating stab of pain. It was jarring enough that even Darkwing “Get Back Up” Duck had to give pause. His whole body was sore and that made it hard to pinpoint any single injury, but if whatever it was wasn’t completely broken yet, putting pressure on it would certainly get it there.

He tested one arm and then the other, and used the one that hurt less to push himself up. Except as he shifted his leg, it happened again, and this time it was bad enough that his vision melted away and he collapsed. 

Above Launchpad’s couch, there hung one of several posters of Darkwing Duck. Jim Starling’s Darkwing Duck. The real, the original, the one he was meant to emulate. He was looking down on him. He was _always_ looking down on him. It was only a piece of paper, but it was difficult to shake the notion that Jim Starling was seeing him fail. 

He held Jim’s artificial gaze until consciousness left him again. 

——

When Darkwing Duck woke again, it had tilted towards noon, and the air in the garage had grown warm and stale, and Launchpad was there, and he looked so upset, and there were voices outside, and the world came at Darkwing so fast the moment he opened his eyes that it dazed him. Launchpad was asking him questions that he couldn’t hear, much less answer. 

Launchpad’s arm slipped under Darkwing’s and hoisted him up off the floor with no effort at all. There was dried blood where he’d been laying. Darkwing had no idea where it had come from. There were any number of bad sensations to choose from. 

Launchpad’s voice faded in abruptly, like someone had cranked the volume on a stereo. “--McDee’s right outside, DW, you gotta be quiet!”

Darkwing hadn’t realized he’d been making noise, but as Launchpad jostled him, a prevailing pain shot up his leg and into his back, and he had to cut off a yelp by holding his own bill shut. 

Unable to walk, unable to process, and there stood Jim, watching him in all his shortcomings. 

Launchpad fell into what was rapidly becoming a familiar routine with him. Hide the costume. Clean up. Bandage wounds. Food, generally refused. At _least_ a little water. Then sleep. Darkwing wanted sleep so badly. Whatever had just happened to him, it didn’t feel like rest. Exhaustion was still weighing on him, a cinderblock hung around his neck by a thin little string. It pulled him under again while Launchpad was stitching up a frighteningly deep, jagged gash across his abdomen. 

When he surfaced once more, Launchpad was still there. Darkwing had made it to the couch somehow, all stitched and bandaged and cozy under one of Launchpad’s big, heavy blankets. Launchpad was sitting next to the spot where Darkwing’s head was laid, on the one cushion he wasn’t taking up, sprawled out as he was. 

Darkwing woke facing the cushion, and the wall where Jim’s poster hung. He rolled over as quickly as his he could, pushing against fatigue and stiffening wounds, but Jim’s face was right there waiting for him on the TV screen, too. He hated the dread he felt. 

“Hey, LP,” he said, croaking. His throat was still full of garage floor grit and maybe a little blood. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Nah,” Launchpad said flippantly, pointing the remote outward to turn the volume down. “Mister McDee’s doing work around the house, and Della took the Sunchaser out.”

Darkwing grunted, shifting onto his back and shutting his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at _Jim_ anymore, just for one minute. 

“You feeling better, DW?” Launchpad continued. Darkwing could feel him staring, and decided not to look back. 

“Sure, Launchpad. I’m fine. I am unflappable. I’m—”

“Darkwing Duck. I know.”

“I was _gonna_ say the terror that flaps in the night.” 

Launchpad let out a sigh, and Darkwing felt a hand on his stomach. It wasn’t a tender touch. He could feel Launchpad pressing down on his abdomen, just hard enough that it would cause a reaction if something were wrong internally, and for all either of them knew something might be. Darkwing kept his eyes and his mouth shut and willed Launchpad not to notice him clench his teeth. 

Launchpad knew better by now than to suggest a doctor visit. Instead he said, “Go back to sleep, DW,” and his hand moved up to Darkwing’s hair. 

The next time Darkwing woke up, Launchpad hadn’t moved a muscle, but he had burned through about half of season two. He was currently on the episode where Darkwing Duck had been driven to hang up his cape, thanks to the machinations of Quackerjack. The breakfast sandwich that Launchpad had left out for him hours and hours prior was starting to stink up the garage even worse, old egg and mayonnaise and cheese. 

The only indication that Launchpad had moved recently was a water bottle pressed against Drake’s eye, still a little bit cold. It felt nice. He didn’t need to look to know that eye was swollen and bruised. 

Launchpad had Darkwing’s cape laid out over his lap, and was neatly and patiently running a needle through it, closing up yet another hole.

Darkwing sat up on his own for the first time since he had broken into the garage in the small, dark hours of morning and cracked that water bottle open, draining it in one swig. 

“Morning, DW,” Launchpad said, good natured as ever, though Darkwing could see plainly that the sun had already begun to descend.

This time, Launchpad paused the show. Darkwing wished he hadn’t, now staring down the barrel of a freeze frame of Jim’s face looking straight back at him, an expression that was angry and judgmental, but somehow still wearing a wicked little smirk. 

Launchpad, clearly not noticing Darkwing’s chagrin, kept on talking. “Hey, did I ever ask you what you thought of the characterization with Quackerjack in season two? It felt odd, right? Like maybe—”

“Like maybe Paddywhack’s influence never fully went away? Yeah.” Darkwing smiled good-naturedly. He’d definitely had this conversation with Launchpad multiple times already in the few short weeks he’d been living here. There was a time in his life where he would have loved to talk circles about deep Darkwing Duck lore, but that time had passed, violently and without ceremony. 

Launchpad tilted his gaze Darkwing’s way. He didn’t look any less upset than he had when he’d first found Darkwing on the floor. “You feeling alright?” he asked again. This, too, was part of their routine. The smell of old breakfast turned Darkwing’s stomach. “Sixteen stitches, DW. That’s a lot of stitches. Any stitches is a bad number of stitches.” 

“Launchpad, I’m fine,” Darkwing replied, because he was supposed to. It was part of a script, for a role that was getting more and more difficult to step out of.

“You also might have a break this time.”

Launchpad pressed a finger against Darkwing’s left ankle, just one, and it lit up with fire. Darkwing’s eyes filled with water, and with no mask and wide, droopy hat brim to hide behind. 

“Quit poking me!” he snapped. “I said I’m fine!” The crushing guilt for being mean to Launchpad McQuack set in immediately, but Darkwing found that feeling bad just made him angrier. On the screen, Jim watched his outburst.

“This was your idea, LP! Remember? Remember ‘do it for Jim’, Launchpad?”

Launchpad clicked the power off, Jim’s face vanishing into a black screen that reflected their own instead, Darkwing scowling and Launchpad frowning, looking so sad in that bottomless and expansive way that he felt every emotion. Darkwing hesitated, beak hanging open in disbelief at himself. “I’m sorry,” he said right away, and he meant it. “I’m sorry. That was awful. I—I need to go.”

“Drake, no—” Launchpad started, but Darkwing snatched the cape away from him, thread and needle still hanging off of it, and moved to stand. He stopped immediately when his broken foot touched the floor, debilitated by the searing agony that started in his leg and burned all the way up into his brain. 

Launchpad, ever helpful even when someone was treating him like garbage, shot his arms out to give Darkwing something to lean on that wasn’t his injured leg. “I was _gonna_ say that you won’t be able to walk,” Launchpad said dryly. 

Darkwing Duck stood, as best as he possibly could, and exhaled slowly, weighing his options. Night was settling in, and with it came a _need_ , gnawing at him like Jim’s inescapable glare. “I have to patrol,” he said, knowing already that wasn’t the answer Launchpad wanted.

“On a broken foot?”

“I’ll call an Uberd.”

“An _Uberd_? Do I mean nothing to you?”

Launchpad griped, mirroring back the same overdramatic overacting that Darkwing himself was known for. He was trying to play, trying to lighten the mood, trying to trick him into calming down. 

Darkwing grumbled in frustration. The poster loomed over their heads, and he thought back on the day the studio caught fire. The day that Jim Starling finally snapped. The day that Launchpad McQuack nearly died right before his eyes, a split-second and a hair away from being caught up in the explosion, all because he’d wanted to help. 

Darkwing closed his eyes and tried to will the omnipresent vision of Jim Starling away. “I _have_ to be out there. I have to do something. I…”

“Drake.”

It was the second time already that Launchpad had used his actual name, and somehow it stung worse than his ankle, or the stitches in his gut. Was the idea that he could actually become Darkwing Duck slipping away from Launchpad already?

Drake breathed in deep and tried to swallow his fears, but they remained, boiling over and spilling out of his mouth. “... If I stop moving, I start to think about Jim, and I… I can’t think about Jim.” 

Launchpad looked puzzled. His gaze turned up to the poster as if he was realizing for the first time in a long time that it was even there. 

Drake wished he could leave it at that and just stop talking, but that’s not what he did. “Jim died, Launchpad. He died because he hated me, and he hated me _so much_ that he hurt innocent people over it. He hated me so much that he stopped being a hero. He hated me so much that it killed him.”

“DW—”

“Don’t.”

“Drake. Jim died saving us, remember?”

“No, he died saving _you_ ,” Drake said bitterly. “I was just in the way.”

“... Do you want me to take the poster down?” 

Drake balked. It had occurred to him, of course, but the thought of actually making Launchpad do it opened up a well of guilt. “No. No, no, I just—I should find someplace else to sleep, this is your space and—” Launchpad was already standing up and reaching for the poster, and without the support, Darkwing’s leg gave and he sank back down onto the cushions, grabbing uselessly at Launchpad’s sleeve. “No, LP, stop. Really.”

“It’s just a piece of paper, DW,” Launchpad said. He peeled it carefully off the wall, collecting sticky tack between his fingers, and rolled the paper up delicately in his hand, picture facing in. No longer a source of torment, just a white tube. He tucked it away behind some stacked crates serving as a table, or a dresser, or maybe just crates.

“But it’s… still important to you,” Drake said. “You shouldn’t have to take it down on my account.”

“The real Darkwing Duck’s crashing on my couch, that’s way more impressive than an old poster.”

The real Darkwing Duck. Drake sat with those words for awhile, staring unfocused at the empty spot on the wall. “... There is no real Darkwing Duck,” he said finally, dejected, throat tight. “I’m still just a dumb kid playing make-believe.” 

There was a heavy pause, neither of them daring to so much as shuffle their feet or breathe too loudly. Launchpad kept his eyes on the spot behind the crates where he had stored his Jim Starling poster, turned away just enough that Drake couldn’t read his expression. When Launchpad did turn back to him, he was grinning in a way Drake doubted he had been before.

“Hey, you wanna grab a burger?” Launchpad asked, as upbeat as ever.

Drake gave him a dumbfounded look, slowly processing what Launchpad was trying to do. Could it be so easy to just let the moment pass? Was it the _right_ thing to do? Or was he just taking advantage? 

Launchpad’s expression fell a little as he waited for a response, and he adjusted his approach, cutting off a downward spiral that must have been apparent in Drake’s face.

“I love Darkwing Duck,” he said, speaking slowly, with carefully chosen words. “But… I’m worried about Drake Mallard. I haven’t seen much of him lately.”

“Thought I was—”

“You have to be both,” Launchpad said, speaking over Drake. “You _are_ Darkwing Duck, and you are Drake. It’s not just a role you’re playing. It’s not separate. It’s part of you.”

Drake threw his arms up as if there were a physical onslaught he could block. He almost wished there were. That’s a situation he would know how to handle. 

“You gotta ask for help,” Launchpad went on, softer now. “I never said for you to do it all alone.”

Drake took in a deep breath. Relying on someone else still felt like failure, but it was easier to fall into without the weight of Jim Starling’s judgment hanging over him. “Okay, LP,” he said, exhaling. “I need your help.”

Launchpad brightened up instantaneously. It came so damn easy for him. Drake--Darkwing--wondered if he could hold onto that radiance somehow and let Launchpad drag him out of his rut. 

“We’re gonna get some burgers and fries,” Launchpad said decisively, already reaching for the keys to Scrooge’s green Jeep, “and we’re gonna spend a quiet night in, and tomorrow I’m gonna take you out on patrol, ‘cause that leg is not gonna heal in 24 hours.”

Launchpad was nice enough to not point out that a busted leg meant Darkwing would not be running down criminals for weeks to come, and Darkwing didn’t point it out either. He let Launchpad hoist him up and pile him into the car, the both of them carefully guarding his injuries.

\---

The road that would take them into town spiraled several times around Killmotor Hill. Whenever Darkwing had to take this descent on foot, he typically scaled down the sides, sliding down rocky faces and trudging through bushes. It was just faster. This time, he got to sit comfortably in the passenger side, gazing out the window at the landscape and shorelines around them. 

Launchpad, evidently, was taking in the sights as well. He righted the car and himself a second after they nicked the guardrail, and Darkwing screamed a little louder than he was proud of.

“Whoops, sorry!” Launchpad shouted, jerking the wheel, but over Launchpad’s voice Darkwing could hear another one, muffled and tinny and jarringly familiar, coming from the glove compartment. Darkwing popped it open and pulled out a little Darkwing Duck bobblehead, looking thoroughly placid as he held it up to his own face.

“You are such a nerd,” he said, tapping the bobblehead so it would spit out the titular catchphrase. 

“Okay, _Darkwing Duck_ ,” Launchpad quipped right back. The two laughed at themselves and at each other, and something heavy in Drake’s ribcage dissipated. Drake put the toy on the dashboard instead of hiding it away again, and it felt okay.

Later, parked next to a burger joint where they sat pulling greasy fries out of a paper sack, Launchpad reached over and tapped the bobblehead again. “I looked for First Darkness merch, too,” he said. “There wasn’t much.”

“Yeah, they produced _some_ to capitalize on the release, but I think even the bigwigs didn’t expect the movie to do very well. Feels weird to admit. Like, don’t get me wrong, I was over the moon to get the part, but I was thinking years in the future. I was thinking that there would be more releases to follow, maybe even a reboot of the show, and I’d… I’d be there, because I had to be. I’m Darkwing Duck.” 

He _was_ Darkwing Duck. He’d wanted it all along, his whole life. He could never have become anything else, and the version of himself that had denied it just ten minutes prior felt like a different person. A stranger. 

Drake took a pause, holding a rapidly cooling french fry between his fingers because suddenly his stomach was too knotted to eat it. “I guess that’s all Jim wanted too, huh?”

“Jim… lost his way.”

“And what if I lose mine?”

Launchpad reached over. His hand completely dwarfed Drake’s, fingers curling inward around it, and slowly threading through Drake’s. Drake stopped breathing, something he prayed Launchpad didn’t notice as he worked the ulterior motive of sliding the french fry out of Drake’s grasp and stealing it away into his own mouth. 

“I get that you’re mixed up about Jim,” Launchpad said eventually, through chewing. “It was… scary. But it doesn’t have to take away what Darkwing Duck means to us, you know? I understand if you don’t wanna watch the show with me, but don’t give up on Darkwing Duck. He’s so much more than a TV character.”

Drake caught a hint of desperation, the tiniest hairline crack in Launchpad’s relentless glee. It gave him pause, observing as Launchpad upended the carton of fries into his mouth and chewed through a frown. 

“Okay, LP. I told you what Darkwing Duck is to me. What is he to you?”

A huge grin cracked across Launchpad’s face, and Drake sensed he’d made a mistake.

“He’s my hero, and he’s an inspiration, and he thinks he doesn’t snore at night but he definitely does.”

“Rude! Slanderous and rude!”

“Like the Sunchaser’s engine after I crashed into that dam.”

Drake stuck his tongue out, and Launchpad did the same, and then a silence fell over the car. One not too comfortable, Drake content to sit there and eat quietly in the company of his best friend, but acutely aware of the way Launchpad squirmed in his seat, trying in vain not to let more words spill from his mouth. 

“Darkwing Duck was my only friend when I needed one most.”

A cold stab in Drake’s gut, thinking back on beatings in the schoolyard, dented lunchbox, handmade cape torn from his shoulders, the ground rushing at him. Someone’s foot planted on his back to keep him down while others kicked and punched and spat. Blood and dirt and tears and lonely nights spent bandaging his knuckles while the television droned in the background. Telling himself that if Darkwing Duck could take the hits, then so could he. 

He wondered if Launchpad had ever endured the same. Poor, sweet, big-hearted Launchpad. 

Drake shook the memories, and sighed dramatically, holding out his fries. Launchpad took the container from his hand without hesitation, and within seconds, they were gone. “As always, LP, you are right.” 

“I am?” Launchpad said, an elated glimmer in his eyes. “So you’ll keep being Darkwing Duck and inspiring a new generation to stand strong and fight for what’s right?”

“Well, yes,” Drake said, as he prodded a finger lightly against his abdomen and marveled at the searing pain that flared up. “But I meant about taking some time off… and maybe finding a doctor.” 

“Oh!” Launchpad grabbed his burger, wedging it in his mouth before putting the keys in the ignition. He hit the gas hard, intending to speed off in what Drake imagined would have been a very cool fashion, but the car flew into reverse instead, and they were sent careening through a chain link fence, screaming.


End file.
